CHAPTER 1

Buddhism and the Culture of India

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN CULTURE

The formation and growth of any religion is sure to have a cultural background. As is common knowledge, in the present-day world, if we speak of civilizations with a long history and cultural tradition, there are only China and India in the East, and Egypt and Greece in the West. These are called the world's four great ancient civilizations.

The glorious history of Greece is already a thing of the past, but its cultural legacy has mixed with other elements and spread, contributing to the formation of the modern civilization of Europe and America. Egyptian civilization is already remote and hidden in the mists, and only some fragments of its grandeur remain. Indian civilization, especially the Buddhist civilization which has made such an impact on the world and has shone brightly from ancient to modern times, has already been completely assimilated in the territory of Chinese civilization, through a process that lasted from the end of the Han dynasty through the Song dynasty.

Greek civilization represents the West. It developed first from a religion to a philosophy; from a philosophy it evolved into science, bringing about the modern Western culture. Thus one can say that it has many flourishing offshoots.

If people in today's world want to inquire into the source of the various great religious civilizations, they soon find that, ultimately, all these civilizations had their origins in the East. This is particularly true of Buddhist civilization, which long ago became interconnected with Chinese civilization to form a single whole. Its widespread influence thus goes without saying. But when we trace the source and seek the background of the sudden rise of Buddhism in India, and examine its development into a great stream radiating in all directions after its transmission to China, we are sure to uncover a definite sequence of cause and effect. Therefore, to understand the birth of Buddhist civilization and its gestation in the civilization of the preceding period, we must first have some elementary knowledge of traditional Indian civilization.

The Background of Indian Culture

Humans are born between heaven and earth, and it is unavoidable that both climate and geographical circumstances are important factors in shaping a people's civilization. India is a peninsula in southern Asia, and its geography and climate have obvious differences from lands in other regions. Southern India extends into the tropics, while northern India is next to the Himalaya Mountains and central India has a temperate climate. For the people of ancient India, the yearly cycle, in accord with the climate, was divided into three seasons of four months each. Because of India's location between the temperate and the tropical zones, the physical and mental activity of its people, and, generally speaking, their way of thinking, was very lively. This is particularly true of the southern regions, which were even richer in mystical imagination.

From ancient times until today, the cultures and languages of India have never been unified. In ancient India, there were more than fifty or sixty writing systems. These are generally lumped together under the single term Sanskrit for all forms of Indian written language, but in reality, Sanskrit is just one of the many written languages of India. There are still several dozen languages current in India today. China was able to unify its weights and measures and its written language because of the great unification it underwent in the Qin and Han dynasties (c. 220 B.C.-A.D. 200). But such was not the case for India. Though from ancient times until now it has always been called one country, in reality, India is still divided into various ethnic groups, each occupying its own area. Hence Indian culture has never really been unified.

During the period from the Zhou dynasty to the Qin dynasty in Chinese history (c. eleventh to third centuries B.C.), India was divided into various small states, just as China was. There were two or three hundred small principalities, each occupying its own territory and each having its own ruler. During this period, many schools of learning were established. The various schools of thought all claimed to teach the truth, although in just a single region there were more than a hundred different schools. In the cultural life of the people, there was one special characteristic: class divisions were very strict, and so noble and humble were sharply separated into castes and received very different treatment. This outlook remains deep-rooted and strong, despite all the attacks of 20th-century ideas of freedom and equality. Concerning this, we can only quote the proverbial observation: Something that has been so since ancient times will not change now.

The Indian system of four castes creates four traditional classes of people. First, the brahmans were hereditary specialists in rituals and sacrifices. They were the heart of instruction in religion and culture and ranked the highest of the castes. Hence of all the castes, they merited the highest respect. They were the upper stratum, functioning as spiritual and intellectual leaders. All military and political affairs were influenced by them. Second were the kshatriyas, the royal officers and warriors. They gathered together military and political power in a single lineage and became hereditary rulers. Third, came the vaisyas, the class of merchants, who possessed wealth and controlled trade, while the fourth class, the sudras, were a class of peasants who worked tilling and planting the land.

Besides these four, there was also a class of hereditary slaves and debased people who performed lowly occupations like butchering animals and so on. Their position was the lowest of all and their lives were very difficult and full of suffering. This ancient Indian system of four castes has remained solid and unbreakable for over three thousand years. The remnants of this way of thinking have still not been totally obliterated.

The brahman class controlled cultural education and, relying on the four Vedas, upheld the concepts of Brahman (the absolute) and Atman (the true self). This formed the Brahmanical religion that was the center of historical Indian civilization. This gradually spread out and influenced the thinking and consciousness of the three upper castes, the brahmans, kshatriyas, and vaisyas, toward the way of life of the shramana who leaves home to cultivate the path to self-realization.

For them, the ideal course of a person's life was divided into four periods. The first was a period of pure conduct, a period of life devoted to a young person's education. When they reached a certain age, young people would leave home to study the Vedas and other branches of learning. (For the disciples of brahmans, this was from age 8 to 16; for the disciples of kshatriyas, from 11-20; for the disciples of vaisyas, from age 12-24.) These disciples would spend a set period of time studying, for example, a term of twelve years, or twenty-four years, or thirty-six years, or forty-eight years. Only when the term was completed and their studies accomplished, could they return home to ordinary life.

The second period, the period of living as a householder, was one of maturity, when a person would marry and have children, undertaking the responsibilities of family life and fulfilling the duties of heading a household.

The third was a period of living in the forests. This was the period of middle age, when a person would live in seclusion in the forest, a period of life when the person concentrated on cultivating the path. Having already completed their obligations as householders during their mature years, from this point on people would live in seclusion to devote themselves to higher pursuits, diligently cultivate ascetic practices, and learn various methods of meditative concentration and contemplation, in order to seek the sublimation of the Atman to reach union with Brahman.

Fourth, came a period of withdrawal from the world. By means of cultivating practice in their middle years, when people entered their years of old age and decline, their life of cultivating practice would have reached a conclusion. Their bodies and minds would be absolutely purified, and they would have already perfected the fruits of the path. From this point on, they would seclude themselves in the forests, free from sensory entanglements and no longer participating in the affairs of the world.

This ideal human life was advocated and experienced not only by the brahmans themselves; the kshatriyas and vaisyas could also emulate it. But the sudras, the menial class, never had any way to share in it. This kind of religious life was thus fundamentally restricted. For this reason, there was a reaction among the kshatriyas, who gradually became dissatisfied with the old norms of thinking that placed the brahmans in the lead. The kshatriyas began to assert themselves and provided the impetus for new trends of thought in such fields as religion, philosophy, culture, and education. Thenceforth, they began to investigate the real truth about the world, to seek the ultimate of the Atman spirit, and to delve into the basic source of the myriad forms in the universe. Thus, as soon as the books of profound meaning called the Upanishads began to appear within Indian culture, they were pitted against the traditional spirit of the brahmans. But the position of the brahmans remained as preeminent as ever. Brahmanical thought had deeply penetrated Indian culture and was hard to change.

From the foregoing introduction, we can understand the source of the thought of the people of ancient India and their cultural background. Due to the specifics of their geographical circumstances and the natural climate, the ancient Indians liked contemplative pursuits and enjoyed setting their wills on lofty, far-reaching goals. Moreover, they already had the deeply rooted religion of Brahmanism and a pervasive system of religious thought. From the beginning of their history, the Indians tended toward the idea of leaving the world in order to seek to purify body and mind, and they considered living in retreat in the forest as the greatest enjoyment in human life. Thus their thought system was preoccupied with lofty concerns and tended toward empty imaginings. But most of all, returning from the lofty concept of Atman to ordinary human life, the intermediate level, a humanistic system of thought, was lacking. This contributed to the extremely rigid caste divisions and the extreme inequality of status between high and low. Even religious beliefs in ancient India could not arrive at concepts of equality and liberty.

Shakyamuni Buddha arose in response to these conditions. With his great vow of compassion, he founded the Buddhist religion, balancing out inequalities, keeping the good points from the preexisting culture and doing away with its shortcomings. He taught in response to what was good and beautiful in the human spirit, summing up a hundred generations of cultural tradition. He refuted the concept that humankind was divided into classes by nature, and pointed out how to elevate, refine, and perfect human nature.

The Religion and Philosophy of Ancient Indian Civilization

With the particular form and the rich contents of its thought systems, Indian civilization truly occupied an extremely important and preeminent position in world cultural history for about three thousand years, from roughly 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1000.

The following were major components of the thought of the ancient civilization of India:

The Vedas: Ancient Indian civilization is commonly called Vedic civilization. This was the period when the brahmanical religion was the center of culture. The education propagated by the brahmans determined the people's cultural consciousness. They relied totally on the Vedas for their central ideas. Veda means “treatise on wisdom” or “treatise of explanation.” In other words, treatises which seek knowledge of the universe and of human life. They include three main sections: verses of praise and collections of mantras; books on pure conduct called Brahmanas, books of the brahmans, and books of spiritual learning; and books of abstruse meaning, called Upanishads, which are books of esoteric philosophy. There are four collections of verses of praise, called the four Vedas-, the Rig-Veda, containing elegies and chants; the Yajur-Veda, describing sacrifices; the Sama-Veda, containing songs; and the AtharvaVeda, containing prayers.

The Vedic elegies and explanations are the fount of Indian religion and philosophy. They pay homage to a multitude of gods and spirits. They offer worship and make songs of praise to Heaven and Earth, the Sun and Moon, the wind and clouds, the thunder and rain, and myriad natural phenomena, such as mountains and rivers and animals. Hence, the early Vedic religion can be called a primitive culture's pantheism. In their religious and philosophical message, the Vedas do not talk of hell and do not talk of the past. They do not contain the concept of cause and effect, nor of karmic rewards and punishments. However, they do hold that the human soul does not perish. Their idea is that, after the body dies, the soul returns to Yama's heaven. The Vedas teach that, in all matters relating to sacrificing to the gods and spirits, and all prayers to avoid calamities and attract blessings, the people can get a response by chanting the verses of the Vedas. This is quite similar to the prayers and incantations of the religious specialists in ancient Chinese culture. It is also like the primitive religious consciousness found among all the world's ethnic groups at a certain point in their history.

Gradually, in order to satisfy metaphysical needs, from this primitive religious belief there eventually arose accounts of the origin of humanity. The origin of humanity was due to a chief god who created everything. He was the supreme deity, the origin of the universe and of the human race. All the shapes and forms of myriad phenomena in the universe were also his creations along with humanity.

The books of pure conduct, called the Brahmanas, form the second section of the Vedas. As time moved forward, the philosophy of the Vedas could no longer fully meet people's needs. At this point, the books of pure conduct came into existence to spur on the brahman class and form a solidly constructed brahmanical religion. Most of the books of pure conduct still had as their essential message an affirmation of the sacrifices and songs that the Vedas used to offer praises to the gods and provide explanations of man and the world and formulas for praying to avert disasters and attract blessings.

As for their religious philosophy, the Brahmanas transformed the Vedic philosophy of a chief god who was the creator of all things and the origin of man. They revered a god who was the lord of creation, but held that this god was not apart from our true selves. This chief god was Brahman. The name “Brahman” means absolutely pure and perfectly real. The Brahmanas asserted that there is no duality between Atman, the true self of human beings, and the true self of Brahman. This is similar to the later Confucian idea of the unity of Heaven and mankind, and is similar to the message of other religions that God and mankind share the same essence.

Subsequently, this religious consciousness of Brahman, and the philosophy that there is no duality between Brahman and Atman, the true self of humans, became deeply implanted in Indian philosophical thought. This has endured all the way to the present day. The highest goal of modern Indian religion and its yogic techniques is still to reach the realm where Brahman and Atman are united as one.

Still, the brahmanical religion, based on revering and following the Brahmanas, the books of pure conduct, adhered at the same time to the Vedic traditions and paid homage to the grandeur of nature. It adopted the pervasive supernatural beings worshipped by the lower orders of society, namely the asuras, the rakshas, the evil spirits, and other spirits, and honored them all.

The only special point of the Brahmanas, compared to the brahmanical religion, is that they incorporated a religious philosophy of cause and effect and karmic reward and punishment. This is the theory that sentient beings revolve in the cycle of birth and death due to the force of karma. It explains that, because they planted different good and evil causal bases in their past lives, people receive different rewards of pleasure and suffering in their present lives. Based on this, there were also teachings concerning what they called “ascending to heaven” and “descending to hell.” This is the original source of the teaching of karmic reward and punishment.

The third section of the Vedas, the books of abstruse meaning or the Upanishads, were what came into prominence after the Brahmanas, the books of pure conduct. The Vedas were the source of the traditional religion and philosophy of ancient India. After a transformation, the Brahmanas came into existence, vast all-inclusive collections, the holy scriptures of the primitive Indian religion, Brahmanism. After another transformation, the Upanishads came into existence, and brought together the Indian religious philosophy and the widespread philosophy of the intellectuals and the common people. At the end of the period of the Brahmanas, the religious and philosophical researches of people in India had already reached the stage of an enthusiastic outflow in all directions, reaching everywhere high and low. No matter whether male or female, young or old, everyone was studying issues like the liberation of the mind's spiritual awareness, the destination of the soul, and the formation of the world with all their mental strength. The Chinese transliteration of the word Upan-ishad has the connotation of a teacher and disciple sitting face to face communicating secrets.

The contents of the Upanishads are very rich, their thinking is profound and abstruse: the whole collection includes more than two hundred works. The German philosopher Schopenhauer was infatuated with the Upanishads, and his own philosophical thinking was very much influenced by them. He praised the Upanishads again and again. He said that they were filled with holiness and ardor, that every chapter could induce lofty and pure thinking, and that, of all the books in the world, it was hard to find any that could match them in excellence and profundity. He thought that these books could console him in life and give him repose in death.

The Upanishads have several special characteristics. They affirm the nonduality of Brahman and Atman. They assert that both the essence of the lord of creation, who is beyond form, and the essence of humans, who are at the level of form, are fundamentally a single whole. The myriad phenomena in the world are fundamentally born of the same root as we ourselves. The philosophy of the Brahmanas starts from the life of the physical body and goes on to talk of the life of the soul. But it stops there and does not explain why things are so. The Upanishads, on the other hand, take the self that is hidden within our bodies and minds, and analyze it into five treasuries and four states. The four states are wakefulness, dreaming, sound sleep, and death. The five treasuries are the self produced by tasting flavors, the self produced by the breath of life, the self produced by consciousness, the self produced by knowledge, and the self produced by joy. This self produced by joy is the realm where the soul by itself reaches its supreme point and is absolutely happy.

In sum, the ultimate aim of the Upanishads’ philosophy of Brahman and Atman is to take the small self of the individual person, liberate it, elevate it, refine it, and return it to the great self of Brahman, like the hundred rivers returning to the sea, or a drop of water going back to its source. The whole universe and all the sentient beings in it, along with the dense array of myriad forms, are all no more than the transformations of the one great self, Brahman.

According to the Upanishads, the myriad apparent phenomena of this world, including devas, humans, animals, plants, and all living things, are all born from the transformations of Brahman. By means of the five great elements, earth, water, fire, wind, and space, Brahman gives birth by transformation to things born from eggs, things born from wombs, things born from heat, things born from moisture, horses, humans, elephants, plants and animals, and all kinds of things. Like the ocean rising up in waves, Brahman, through illusory transformations, produces the multitude of apparent phenomena. In doing this, Brahman has no particular aim, but is just playfully performing magical transformations. Therefore, all apparent phenomena are empty illusions. Only the one Atman/Brahman really exists.

The process by which Brahman gives rise to the world's myriad phenomena can be summed up into four phases. First, from the self of name and form (which can be said to be an abstract concept of subjective functioning), Brahman develops this world. Second, Brahman also has an initial self, which gives rise to desires. From the imagination of desire flows forth water, fire, and earth, the three great original elements which form the personal self. Third, by transforming and combining with the personal self, Brahman enters into the other multitude of phenomena. Fourth, in making the world by means of selves, the sea and the wind come into existence, along with life and death. Brahman enters through the gate which living species have on the top of their heads, and makes their personal selves.

The personal self is the center of sentient beings. The term “sentient beings” is broadly inclusive. It includes the many kinds of devas and humans, as well as all the kinds of living things in the world. Brahman's own nature has two aspects. One aspect is the ability to maintain always the fundamental state of basic essence. Another aspect is the ability to develop into a living personal self. In other words, one aspect is the power to organize itself into the body belonging to a personal self (like a physical body), while the other aspect is the ability to transform into the life force and enter into the lives of all sentient beings (like a soul).

The physical-body part is analyzed into five kinds of winds and three qualities. The five kinds of winds are similar to what the Taoists call the energy system: exhalation, inhalation, the intermediate wind, the death wind, and the dissolving wind. The three qualities are joy, sorrow, and confusion. Atman is enclosed by the physical body and the mental consciousness and cannot go free. It is as if it is locked up in a prison. It is always within the small space at the base of the heart.

The Atman is always shut up within our relevant functions, that is, such functions as breathing, sensing, and intending. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are called the organs of knowing: they are the source of knowledge. The hands, feet, tongue, excretory organs, reproductive organs, and others are called the organs, and they are the source of will. The controlling factor which links them together is intent.

When we are awake, because of the five winds and the various organs, we are entirely active and in motion. When we are dreaming, only the five winds and the intent are active. When we are sleeping without dreams, the intent stops and only the five winds are active. The state of awakening is the realm of liberation. This is exactly Atman's state of joy where there is no joy, no sorrow, no confusion, no pain, and no happiness.

There are only two roads the fate of sentient beings with personal selves can follow: cyclical existence and liberation. One is to follow apparent phenomena in their continuing transformations: this is cyclical existence. The other is to return to the fundamental state of Brahman: this is liberation. If sentient beings do not attain liberation, then they all go around and around within the three realms of heaven, earth, and space, in the three planes of existence and the four kinds of birth. The three planes of existence are: the plane of the devas; the plane of the ancestors or the plane of human beings; and the plane of animal existence and hell. The four forms of birth are birth from wombs, birth from eggs, birth from moisture, and birth from transformation.

The ultimate goal of the Upanishads is to find liberation, to get free of wrongdoings and afflictions. It is to awaken to the non-dualistic purity of Brahman with human nature. The reason that people cannot return to the purity of Brahman is the barrier of ignorance and the absence of illumination. Conversely, with illumination, we can awaken to the purity of Brahman. How can humans return to the purity of Brahman? They must cultivate meditative concentration and yoga, control the movement of feelings and superficial phenomena, and chant the mantra OM, the symbol of Brahman. If they can chant it continuously, they can gradually get control of their bodies and minds and enter the nonduality where the real Atman and Brahman join.

THE RISE OF VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL TRENDS

In the process of change from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, and then to the Upanishads, the manner and the method of Indian religious philosophical investigations of the universe and human life became more and more rigorous. The content was also gradually enriched and became more all-inclusive. A welter of contradictions emerged in the thought of the Upanishads, however, and they still could not free themselves from the limited scope of the brahmanical religion. The spirit of seeking reality is the hidden basic nature of humanity, and at this point in Indian history this spirit asserted itself through religious philosophy.

The Six Schools of Philosophy

Around the period that Shakyamuni Buddha founded Buddhism, a profusion of various schools of philosophy, all seeking the truth for themselves, established their independence. Each had its own philosophical system and its own organized system of thought. It is customary in the study of Indian philosophy to speak of the six orthodox schools and the three heterodox schools. The six so-called orthodox schools were Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya or Naiyayaka, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. These six schools accepted the authority of the philosophy that had come down from the Vedas, and they can be called the orthodox schools of the brahmanical religion. The three so-called heterodox schools were Buddhism, Jainism, and Worldly Secularism. These three schools were anti-orthodox: they did not accept the authority of Vedic thought.

The worldview of the Samkhya school was dualistic. It maintained that at the basic source of the world there were two original principles: a material inherent identity and a spiritual self. By the development of these two original principles, there came to be egotism, the five organs of knowledge, the five organs of action, the organ of mind, the five sense objects, and the five great elements. By means of these twenty-five truths, the Samkhya School accounted for the myriad forms of the world.

The Yoga school established its own philosophy based on the thought of the Samkya school. The Vaisheshika school, based on a pluralistic theory, put forward a materialistic view of the apparent world, and explained everything in terms of six fundamental categories: substances, qualities, actions, sameness, difference, and merging. The Nyaya school, with the thought of the Vaisheshika school as its background, developed a logic of causation and explanation in order to verify the validity of knowledge. The Mimamsa school continued the ritual forms of the Brahmanas, the books on pure conduct. The Vedanta school handed down and further expounded the philosophy of the Upanishads. In reality, all six orthodox schools were passing down the Vedas, with some small emendations, and putting a new face on them.

The Samkhya School: A characteristic of all the religions of India had been that, in their investigations of philosophical wisdom, they always went beyond the subjectivity of absolute faith. The philosophy of the Samkhya school affirmed from the first that the real world is characterized by suffering and the absence of bliss, and that people must seek liberation. It taught that people must first comprehend the causes of this suffering. It recognized that such methods as being born as a deva and offering sacrifices and prayers were surely not the means to ultimate liberation. It taught that this world is hard pressed by three kinds of suffering: internal suffering, the suffering associated with sickness (paralysis, fever, congestion), and psychological suffering (being parted from loved ones, being put together with hated enemies, not getting what you seek, the suffering that comes with birth); external suffering, not being able to get free of the pressures and harm done by the material world; and natural suffering, not being able to get free of the bondage imposed by the natural world.

The Samkhya philosophers propounded the theory that the result is there in the cause. They established the doctrine of two primal factors, material inherent nature and spiritual self, as their basic principle. At the same time, they established the twenty-five essences as the real truth of the universe and human life. They put forward a theory of three kinds of awareness: experiential awareness (also called immediate awareness, resembling direct awareness and experience); comparative awareness (the usual form of knowledge, the comparative judgment where things are known by inference); and awareness of the words of the sages. To these three kinds, the Nyaya school added awareness by metaphoric comparison. On the basis of these categories of awareness, the Nyaya philosophers thought that the existence of the gods could not be proven and thus could not be known with certainty, and so they approached a kind of atheism.

The so-called twenty-five essences are shown in the following chart:

Neither subject nor object of creation: the spiritual self

The creative subject: inherent nature

Both subjects and objects of creation:
Egotism

The five sense objects:
form, sound, scent, taste, touch.

The objects of creation:
The five great elements:

space, wind, fire, water, earth

The five organs of knowledge:
ears, skin, eyes, tongue, nose

The five organs of action:
tongue, hands, feet, sexual organs, excretory
      organs

The organ of mind

It is obvious that the philosophical thought of the Samkhya school had emerged from the brahmanical religious consciousness, which tended toward rational investigation and research on life. It was seeking liberation from cyclical existence and realization of the fruit of the path. In the Chinese Buddhist canon among the scriptures of the Samkhya school there is the Golden Seventy Treatise, translated by Paramartha, which can provide research material. But there are still many deficiencies in the Samkhya philosophical system as a whole and its theoretical structure, and it cannot make its case convincingly.

The yoga school: Basically, the philosophical thought of the Yoga school came out of the same trend as that of the Samkhya school. The difference is that, in the basic principles of the Samkhya school, there was a great tendency toward atheism whereas the Yoga school posited a transcendent god, Maheshvara Deva. “Yoga” means contemplative practice and accord between god and man. Thus some translate it as “accord” and some as “meditation” or “meditative contemplation.”

There are four types of yoga scriptures. The first type are those on samadhi, called Samadhi Pada, which explain the basic nature of samadhi. The second type are those on method, called Sadhana Pada, which explain methods to cultivate in order to enter samadhi. The third type are those on spiritual powers, called Vibhuti Pada, which explain the basic principles of spiritual powers and classify them into types. The fourth type are those on existing independently, called Kaivalya Pada, which explain the highest goal, which is to reach the realm of the spiritual self which is absolutely free and without bonds.

In the main, the philosophy of the Yoga school is similar to the Samkhya school. The only difference is that it changes inherent nature to the twenty-fourth truth, the spiritual self into the twenty-fifth truth, and posits Maheshvara as the twenty-sixth essence. Maheshvara (the name means “Great Lord”) has no sentiments, no thoughts, no karma. He is not subject to karmic reward and punishment: he is transcendent, beyond the pain and pleasure of karmic reward. He developed into a great spiritual self beyond time and space. He is the teacher of all devas and humans. His sign, his mantra, is the Sanskrit OM. By chanting that mantra, people can reach accord with Maheshvara. But the god posited by the Yoga school cannot be separated from the body and mind of the personal self. Therefore, the Yoga school's methods and principles of cultivation all proceed from the mental and the physical, and aim to cut off desires, purify the mind, and seek liberation.

The cultivation methods of the Yoga school proceed from eight methods of practice to reach the realm of spiritual powers and liberation. The so-called eight branches of practice are prohibitions against evil conduct, encouragements to good conduct, methods of sitting, tempering the breath, curbing confusion, holding steady, quieting thoughts, and equipoise. The first two branches of practice must be observed in common by everyone, whether they are cultivating the path or they are in conventional life. The remaining six branches are the special practices that must be cultivated by those who are cultivating Yoga practice.

1. The prohibitions are disciplinary precepts for conduct. One must observe the five precepts against killing, robbery, sexual excess, lying, and covetousness.
2. The encouragements urging pure conduct. One must do five things: be satisfied, practice austerities, learn how to chant mantras by reading and from memory, and piously serve the major gods.
3. Methods of sitting: altogether there are from eighty-four to over ninety-six methods. There is lotus sitting, lion sitting, rooster sitting, bowing and sitting, and so on. There are also many different mudras formed with the hands and fingers. These are all secret signs for attaining spiritual powers.
4. Tempering the breath: various methods for refining the breath, patterns of breathing, and methods of breath-work.
5. Curbing confusion: to control the confused feelings of the body, there are such methods as contracting like a turtle to rein in the six sense organs, which can be used to reach a state similar to that of animals when they hibernate.
6. Holding steady: to enable the mind to be unmoved, cut off all false thoughts, and fix the mind in one place.
7. Quieting thoughts: by holding the mind motionless, one can merge mind and objects, and attain meditative concentration where everything is unified.
8. Equipoise (which is samadhi): in the end, one causes the mind to be like empty space, like a mirror reflecting the myriad forms.

The three branches from holding steady to quieting thoughts and equipoise are the central cultivation methods of the Yoga school. By means of these, one attains inconceivable spiritual powers and wisdom. To put it another way, at last one attains the level where one's own inconceivable latent powers are unfurled. Through one's own inherent nature, one attains liberation and enters the realm of wisdom. But there are differences in the depth of samadhi. Generally, samadhi is divided into two types: with thought (with mind) and without thought (without mind). Samadhi without thought is the highest realm of concentration free from thought. If one can proceed from samadhi with thought and reach the wondrous realm without mind, then one can enable the spiritual self to shine alone, transcendent. By cultivating yoga, one can achieve spiritual powers.

According to what is recorded in the Buddhist Treatise on the Mind of Skill in Means, the Yoga school has eight subtle methods of explanation. They are the four great elements (earth, water, fire, and wind) along with space, intent, illumination, and lack of illumination. The Yoga school speaks of eight forms of sovereign mastery: the ability to become small, the ability to become large, the ability to lift things easily, the ability to go far, the ability to follow what the heart desires, the ability to divide the body and appear at many places at once, the ability to be honorable and excellent, and the ability to conceal the body.

We should rather say of the Yoga school's philosophy that it is a doctrine of realization rather than a learned system of thought. Its theories are a gradual transformation of the Upanishadic teachings that have come down from antiquity, but the Yoga school puts particular emphasis on meditation and contemplative practice, on using one's body and mind to seek realization of the truths of its religious philosophy. The methods it employs are almost scientific. In terms of their methods for seeking realization, none of the Indian religions and schools of learning can be separated from the Yoga school's meditation and contemplation, and Buddhism is no exception. It is just a matter of the degree of depth of what is realized, and differences in the accuracy of the perception of truth.

The Vaisheshika School: The name of this school is rendered into Chinese in various ways. The standard term means “school of victorious argument.” The Sanskrit word means something like “differentiating special characteristics.” At first, the school was founded on the theory of six categories for analyzing all phenomena and later this was developed into ten categories. In the Chinese Buddhist canon, there is included a translation by Dharma master Fazang of a treatise on the Vaisheshika school's ten categories by the shastra master Jnanacandra. His account of the ten analytic categories is approximately as follows:

1. Substance: This is a translation of the Sanskrit word dravya. This means that the intrinsic qualities of the real essence of the myriad forms of being in the universe include time and space. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is ti, substance.)
2. Qualities: This is a translation of the Sanskrit word guna. It means the phenomenal appearances of the myriad forms of being in the universe. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is xiang, form.)
3. Actions: This is a translation of the Sanskrit word karma. It means the functions and activities of the myriad forms of being. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is yung, function.)
4. Sameness: This means that, amid the difference in the multitude of apparent forms of being, there are basic principles which they have in common.
5. Difference: This means that, within the sameness of the myriad forms of being, there are all kinds of different specific qualities.
6. Merging: This means that substance and qualities, subject and object, are totally connected within the parts of things.
7. Capability: This means the inherent capacities of the substance, qualities, and actions of the myriad forms of beings.
8. Without capability: This refers to one's own results being born spontaneously, without involvement in the results of others.
9. Categorical consistency: This means that those with the same essence are similar to each other, like humans and other humans, and that those with a different essence are dissimilar to each other, like humans and animals.
10. Nothingness: This means that, ultimately, the myriad forms of being and the multitude of apparent phenomena do not exist.

The guiding principle of the Vaisheshika school was to use its ten categories to make deductions and analyses. These included theoretical discussions of psychology, physiology, material things, spiritual things, time, and space. The philosophers of the Vaisheshika school thought that the material world existed objectively. At the same time, they established a very subtle doctrine analyzing matter into major types, resembling the theories of molecular and atomic physics that are current today. They thought that atoms existed eternally in infinite numbers and, due to invisible forces, assembled together and scattered apart. They pushed their analysis to the point where things could not be further divided—the atomic level—and declared that there was no other master of creation. They said that atoms were invisible and could not be further divided, and that they endured forever without changing and without being destroyed, without beginning and without end.

The Vaisheshika philosophers said that atoms were spherical in shape and that they were one-sixth the size of the particles of floating dust visible in sunlight. They said that the atoms of the four great elements, earth, water, fire, and wind, were all different from each other, and that they had a color, a scent, and a feel, as liquids do. The atoms congealed together and formed double atoms, called child-atoms. When three double atoms joined together, they formed triple atoms, called grandchild-atoms, which were the same size as particles of floating dust visible in sunlight. When four triple atoms joined together, they formed a quadruple atom. The process of aggregation continued like this, through many stages, eventually forming the universe and all its worlds.

The Vaisheshika atomic theory is similar to the atomic theory and materialism of early Greek philosophy, and to the yin-yang theory of the Chinese Book of Changes. The people of several regions reached the same conclusions by different routes, and approached the atomic theories of modern science.

But traditionally, the ultimate spiritual aim of Indian civilization was always to seek liberation from the human world. Since this Vaisheshika theory was developed in India, its ultimate aim was still to seek spiritual liberation, not to investigate and develop knowledge of the material aspects of the world. A characteristic of the Vaisheshika school was its theory that results are not present in causes, and that moving along the path of liberation meant seeking true knowledge and clear perception. This was equivalent to a theory of pure knowledge. Vaisheshika theories were very numerous, and this account will stop here after this brief provisional introduction. In our Chinese Buddhist canons, there are works, such as the Commentaries on the Hundred Treatises and Accounts of Consciousness Only, that you can consult as sources on the Vaisheshika school.

The Nyaya School. The Sanskrit word nyaya has the meaning of logical inference and logical criteria. The common practice in Chinese is to translate it as “the school of correct logic.” This is the ancestral school of Indian logic. The aim with which the Nyaya school was founded was still to seek true knowledge and reach the stage of the liberation of wisdom. Later, it developed into a system of formal logic with five branches: propositions, causation, metaphor, concatenation, and conclusions. The later Indian systems of strict logical inference were all successors to one of the Nyaya school's methods of seeking knowledge, namely, logic, but they did not have the great purpose of the Nyaya school. Some people think that the connection between the development of logic in the West and in India gives much food for thought, but this is beside the point for our present subject, and for now we will not discuss it.

The Mimamsa School: The Sanskrit word mimamsa has the meaning of pondering, investigating, or doing research. The Mimamsa school's philosophy can be described as a religious philosophy that researched the doctrines of the brahmanical religion and propagated the thought of the Vedas. The Mimamsa philosophers undertook to spread orthodox interpretations of the sacrifices and religious methods of the Vedas, and ponder and investigate the inner meaning of the Upanishads.

In the course of this, the Mimamsa philosophers propounded the doctrine of the eternal existence of the actual sounds of the Vedic teachings. They thought that the words of the Vedic scriptures had an intrinsic reality in addition to their meaning that endured forever, along with them, without changing. They thought that the texts of the Vedas were divinely created scriptures, that they were undeniably true, and moreover, that the sounds of their words had an esoteric spiritual power. They worshipped them as the supreme principle, so the sounds of the Sanskrit words were imbued with supreme authority.

This philosophical foundation provided the basis for the later Esoteric Buddhist theory of mantrayoga. It was extraordinarily powerful. As for the method by which this theory was established by the Mimamsa philosophers, it was by no means blind, dogmatic superstition. They used logical methods as their basis and established a theory of awareness. They distinguished immediate awareness through experience and realization, comparative awareness involving knowing by inference, awareness on the basis of metaphoric comparisons, and awareness by criteria of meaning. In order to uphold the brahmanical thought of the ancient scriptures, they completely opposed Buddhist an ti-ritualism. But they were still not able to establish a theory that only god exists, and so Vedanta arose to repair this deficiency.

The Vedanta School: The Vedanta school arose as a continuation of the Mimamsa school. It too was a philosophy that opposed Buddhism and did its utmost to maintain the truth of the Vedas and Upanishads. It established a monistic concept of Brahman as the ultimate. As the name implies, Vedanta was a development of the Vedas.

Though Mimamsa and Vedanta developed comparatively late, and because they were in the main line of Indian religious philosophy, their theories had a great influence on people's minds. Thus they are generally mentioned along with the four great schools discussed previously.

The Buddhism of Shakyamuni versus non-Buddhist Paths

From the foregoing introduction, we have already become acquainted to some small degree with the civilization and religious thought of ancient India, and the profusion of different philosophies and various schools of learning. From our historical and cultural viewpoint as Chinese, the situation in ancient India was exactly like the period at the end of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, when a multitude of philosophies contended with each other and diverse schools of thought flourished. There was ideological confusion, and the ideas in which people believed began to waver under the impact. Added to this were political factors, the economic poverty of society, and warfare between ethnic groups and rival aristocrats. As the saying goes: “Armies bring famine.”

In response to the needs of the time, there arose extraordinary personalities aiming to purify the world and bring relief to the people. There are only two roads which such extraordinary people can follow. One is to seek military power to resolve the situation, carrying out a unification of the country and bringing peace and security to the people. This is the road of the hero. The other is to spread a higher culture and a new way of thought, teaching by word and by example and, as a sage, causing civilizing doctrines to spread throughout the country and to be transmitted for generations to come. A hero conquers everyone and makes all the people in the country submit to him. But he cannot conquer his own afflictions and suffering, or the sorrows of life and death. A sage conquers himself and, on behalf of all people, takes on the burden of long-term affliction, with the bravery it takes to eliminate the sufferings of others.

Given contemporary circumstances in India, Shakyamuni's Buddhism arose in response to a need. Naturally, it had its background in the times and its historical causes. What were the results of Buddhist philosophy and its methods of practice? We will discuss that later. Here we will only deal with the period surrounding Shakyamuni Buddha's appearance, and with the other people who lived at the same time and carried on religious teachings opposed to his. There certainly were such people. We will cite them as illustrative examples, so we can recognize just where the true meaning and spirit of Shakyamuni's Buddhism lay.

The Worldly School

The theory of this school was similar to modern materialism and close to modern-day existentialism. Its followers proposed the theory of depending on the world of apparent reality in all things and holding onto sentiments and thoughts, so it is called the school of following along with the world.

The Worldly school denied the authority of all religions. They thought that, apart from direct sensation, there is nothing that can be believed. Hence, they thought that the conclusions reached by logical inference were also unreliable. They thought that nothing really exists in this world except the four great material elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, which can be seen and touched. The four great elements join together to form all living things, including the bodies and lives of humans; they produce feeling and knowing just as molds form by spontaneous transformation. In turn, spiritual states are but the functioning of matter. In sum, according to the worldly school, apart from matter, no such thing as the spirit exists. Thus, people need only rely on their own sensations and desires, and hunt for happiness. While this body is in existence, people should satisfy their own desires: this is the ultimate human goal. Beyond enjoying this world, there cannot be any other ideal world.

The adherents of this Worldly school were full of romantic sentiments, and were very similar in their way of thinking to such modern day philosophies as materialism, hedonism, and passivity. They advocated the theory that everything happens spontaneously, without a cause; thus there are no causes and no effects. Their refrain was: heaven does not exist; liberation does not exist; there is no spiritual existence; there are no other worlds; thus there is no such thing as karmic reward and punishment.

In fact, this kind of thinking has existed always and everywhere in the contradictory psychology of the human race. Sentient beings are always in an eternal night of dreams, and the morning bell and the evening drum can do nothing about it! But at the time when Shakyamuni Buddha was spreading his teaching, this way of thinking was very powerful. From this, we can imagine the state of unrest in Indian society at that time, and the trend toward decline.

Any society in a state of unrest, in a period of sadness and disillusionment, or when the history of its civilization is going down hill—any society like this, if it does not take vigorous determined action, will move into a state of passivity and intoxication with the enjoyment of immediate reality. When that happens, even if these kinds of ideas and these kinds of proposals do not become a school of thought, they will spontaneously exist in the widespread consciousness of the people. And if people advocate them, they will be enunciated as truths and demonstrated in people's conduct. In this way, they will come to have the power of a school of thought.

Jainism

The founding teacher of Jainism was Vardhamana Mahavira, a contemporary of Shakyamuni Buddha. He was born in a Kshatriya lineage in the region near the city of Vaishali. At the age of twenty-eight, he left home to seek the path. After cultivating practice for twelve years, he thought he had attained great penetrating enlightenment. He was called Jaina, which means “victorious.” In the twenty or thirty years of the latter part of his lifetime, he organized a congregation of shramanas and wandered around teaching throughout the countries of Magadha and Vaishali. At last, he died in the village of Prava in Magadha.

Not long after Mahavira's death, his disciples divided into two great sects, the white-robed sect and the naked sect (also called the natural-body sect and the empty-robe sect). In the Buddhist scriptures, the Jainas are called Nirgranthas which means “free from all ties.” When there was a great famine in Magadha, one group of Jaina monks moved to southern India under the leadership of the head of the group, Bhadrabahu. The group that remained in Magadha assembled a collection of holy scriptures. Later on, when the group that had gone to the south returned to Magadha, they refused to accept this collection of scriptures. In their opinion, only the southern group that advocated going naked was correct. Because of this, a movement gradually arose that split the Jainas in Magadha into a sect that wore white robes and a sect that went naked. By the first century A.D., this split was an accomplished fact. Subsequently, there were even more divisions into branch sects. Even at the present day, there are many men cultivating the path in southern India who still go naked like this.

The philosophical thought of the Jainas was similar in the main to the Samkhya doctrine that opposed mind and matter. They thought that spiritual life had a living soul and that material life did not. They were pure dualists, but they thought that spiritual life was not outside of matter. They also established a theory of seven truths: life, the nonliving, leakage, bonds, control, peaceful stillness, and liberation. When the two truths of good and evil were added to these, there were nine truths in all. From their fundamental philosophical standpoint, the Jainas were dualistic or else pluralistic, and this was always self-contradictory.

The Jainas used the two truths of life and the nonliving as the essential elements in their theory of the karmic rewards of birth and death, and liberation. The other truths were derived from these two. They thought that life is a real essence, basically inherently pure by nature. Because it is covered over by the nonliving (by material things), it loses its fundamental light. All the activities of living are karma. Karma percolates into life, and so it is called leakage. In the Jaina theory, what is called karma is a rarefied form of matter: when the body is in motion, it excretes a rarefied form of matter. Thus, this body is the karmic body. The karmic body ties down life with bonds and joins together with the nonliving to make us revolve in the planes of existence and receive pain and pleasure. To be liberated from cyclical existence, we must cultivate austerities and control the flow of karma into life: this is control. Through control, we reach the level where old karma is obliterated and new karma is not born: this is peaceful stillness. When we progress further and annihilate all karma, life separates from matter and transcends the world: this at last is liberation.

There was another aspect of Jaina theory which showed similarities to the theory of magnetic fields in modern physics. This is very interesting. Now the Jainas divided their category of life into four components: space, dharmas, nondharmas, and matter. When these four components of life were united, they called it a real entity. These four components are what constructs the whole universe. Space is the field in which myriad beings and a multitude of apparent phenomena are formed and move. This field gives all things their basic principles: space itself is a single whole, infinite, eternal, and inactive. But the Jaina theory also said that space is space at the conceptual level. Dharmas are the conditions for movement, the space in which movement is possible. Nondharmas are the conditions for stillness, the space in which stillness is possible. Both dharmas and nondharmas are eternal, single, inactive, independent entities. Matter is comprised of the gross or fine forms made up by the joining together or dissolution of color, scent, taste, touch, sound, etc. It includes the material entities of darkness, shadows, light, and heat. The fine forms of matter are atoms; the coarse forms are compounded things. Atoms are not necessarily indivisible, but they are so rarefied that they occupy a point in space, and their movements are extremely swift. They join together like dryness and moisture, and so they form compound things, and from this they construct objects.

Life, dharmas, nondharmas, and matter coexist in space; they make up the apparent forms of the world. In Jaina theory, transcending this space (this material space) is what is meant by transcending the world. The Jainas thought that nirvana was liberation from the revolving flow. As Buddhism has the three jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the Jainas also spoke of three jewels: correct faith, correct knowledge, and correct conduct. They advocated the cultivation of austerities. They accepted the caste system and some of their teachings are the same as those of the brahmanical religion. But they rejected the Vedas, forbade sacrifices, and prohibited the killing of living beings. In these ways, their spirit was similar to that of Buddhism.

The Outside Paths of the Six Teachers and Others

Next we will discuss the outside paths of the six teachers who were contemporaries of Shakyamuni Buddha. Although these teachers all propounded different theories and disputed among themselves, they were influential at the time and later, and each possessed his own faithful followers. At various points in the Buddhist scriptures, they are mentioned and criticized. But, apart from the Jainas, whose own scriptures are still extant as testimony, the other schools of thought have left only a few fragments from which we may catch glimpses of the contents of their theories. Even though not much remains of them and the ideas they propounded tend toward the preposterous, nevertheless, if they were able to become schools of thought, they certainly must have had some reasoning that could justify their absurd claims. What follows is an approximate account of them.

Purana taught that there is no good or evil in anything, that there is no karmic reward or punishment for merits or wrongdoings, and that there are no gradations of karmic power. This line of thought seems to be based on the concepts of the Worldly school of thought.

Maskarin taught that there are seven components to the bodies of all sentient beings: earth, water, fire, wind, suffering, pleasure, and life. These seven components are indestructible and remain forever without moving. Thus, they can be flung on a sharp blade and still not be injured, because there is nothing that is susceptible of injury and nothing that can die. This line of thought is close to materialism, but it seems to be a development based on the atomistic concepts of the Vaisheshika school.

Sanjayin taught that there are two essential points. The first is to respect the power of the apparent reality of the world. The second is the concept of the survival from previous lives. His followers thought the sovereignty exercised by a monarch could be reborn after his material death and that humans could be reborn after death, just like the plants that die in Fall, remain dormant in Winter, and then return to live again in the Spring. Thus, after dying, people return to be born again in this world. Levels of suffering and pleasure do not depend on the karma people create in their present lives; they are all due to past connections. The present has no causes and the future has no results.

But Sanjayin taught his followers that, if in their present conduct people uphold discipline, practice diligently, and work hard to progress and cover over the evil results in the present life, then they can attain a level where there are no leaks and thereby exhaust the karmic power of the past. Thus they can make all suffering end. When the multitude of sufferings has ended, this is liberation. This kind of thinking seems to be based on the Samkhya theory that results are present in causes.

Ajita-kesakambala's teaching also took the position that there is no good or evil, no disasters or blessings, and denied the theory of cause and effect, or karmic reward and punishment. It seems to be derived from a concept of inert emptiness.

Kakuda-katyayana's teaching took the position that if people kill living beings and feel no remorse in their minds, then in the end they cannot fall into the evil planes of existence, since their minds would be like empty space without a speck of dust or water. If they feel regret, then they enter hell. It is like water soaking in and wetting the earth. The lives of all sentient beings were created by Ishvara. Thus there is no question of human merit or wrongdoing; human behavior is all mechanical. The master craftsman who constructed this mechanism is Ishvara. This line of thought seems to be based on the theories of the Yoga school, progressively deteriorating and becoming more and more aberrant.

Nirgrantha's teaching took the position that there is no such thing as giving charity, no such thing as good, no such thing as father and mother, no present and no future, no arhats, no such thing as cultivation, and no such thing as the path. All sentient beings undergo the cycle of birth and death for eighty thousand eons and then spontaneously attain liberation, no matter whether or not they have faults. It is like the four great rivers of India all entering the ocean, with no distinctions among them. Sentient beings are also like this; when they attain liberation, there are no distinctions among them.

This kind of thought was a totally nihilistic theory of onesided emptiness. Buddhism is good at speaking of emptiness, but emptiness in the Buddhist sense is not the materialistic concept of nothingness. If you study Buddhism without understanding this clearly, you will always take the emptiness of which the Buddha speaks as close to the outside paths’ view of emptiness. But this is something that is not new. Go wrong by the slightest bit at the beginning, and you're off by a thousand miles at the end. In your study of cultivation, you must be alerted to this.

There is another account of the six teachers of the outside paths related in the notes to the Vimalakirti Sutra:

Purana taught that nothing exists, that all phenomena are like empty space, and are neither born nor destroyed. Maskarin taught that the sins and defilements of sentient beings have no causal conditions.

Sanjayin taught that it is not necessary to seek the path. He taught that after a certain number of eons going through birth and death, the end of suffering is attained spontaneously. It's like winding a thread around a mountain: when the thread is used up, it stops. Ajita-kesakambala taught that if you experience suffering in this life, in future incarnations you will experience eternal happiness.

Kakuda-katyayana taught in terms of both existence and nonexistence, giving answers according to the questions he was asked, adopting views in response to people. If someone asked if phenomena exist, he would answer that they do exist. If someone asked if phenomena are nonexistent, he would answer that they are nonexistent.

Nirgrantha taught that wrongdoing and merit, suffering and happiness, are all due to past lives, that you must pay back what you owe. Even if you practice the path in this life, you cannot cut off the results of past karma.

The notes to the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra conclude that these six teachers all created misguided views. They claimed that going naked and practicing austerities constituted omniscience.

The common practice in discussing the sectarian divisions in classical Indian philosophical thought is to focus on the six major schools and the six heterodox teachers discussed above. But, according to what is recorded in the translations of the various Buddhist scriptures, there was a great profusion of separate sects which was not limited to these alone. The Buddhist sources commonly speak of more than ninety-six non-Buddhist views. The Toga Shastra mentions sixteen opinions (sixteen theories based on subjective views), sixty-two views (sixty-two differing ideas), and so on. Other examples are the Treatise on the Nirvana of the Outside Paths and the Lesser Vehicle, which lists twenty non-Buddhist sects, and the Vairocana Sutra, which, in its chapter, “The Mind Abiding in the Path,” lists thirty non-Buddhist sects. Some taught that time is the basis for the formation of the universe and the myriad beings. Some proposed space as the principle formative factor, or the western direction, or the natural world. In voluminous writings, each school propounded its own theory.

If we want to study the world's philosophical thought and religious philosophy, Indian civilization alone already contains all the types of thinking found from ancient to modern times all over the world. We can acclaim Indian philosophy as an unsurpassed marvel.

But over the generations, those who have studied Indian philosophy have only paid attention to the different doctrines and theories of the various schools of thought. In general, they have overlooked the fact that all schools of thought in India adopted the method of seeking realization through experience. In regard to Indian philosophy, it is without doubt a great shortcoming to speak only of theories and not of practical methods. Thus, most students of the classical Indian philosophies have not viewed them in their entirety.

In sum, except for the Worldly philosophy which emphasized a doctrine of enjoying apparent reality, the main teaching of the other schools of Indian philosophy tended toward doctrines of transcending the world. All of them used yogic concentration and contemplation as the guiding principle for cultivating realization. In terms of differences in their methods of yogic concentration and contemplation, each of the various schools had its own theories and attainments. On this basis, there formed the overall Indian philosophical view of methods of cultivating realization, but this is beyond the scope of this book and, for now, we will not deal with it. Nevertheless, the Buddhist teachings and methods of seeking realization are inseparably linked to meditative contemplation and yoga, so we need to give an explanation of these things before proceeding to the main topic.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The foregoing discussion of Indian religion and philosophy leads us to two conclusions. First, ancient India's learned thought had developed in many different directions and showed many marvels. This is understandable since, for any people with a long history, the legacy of culture and thought that they have accumulated over time will not be simple. Unfortunately, in the case of India, the country never passed through a long period of complete unification, and so the many branches of ancient Indian culture and philosophy appear jumbled and it is hard to distinguish clearly among them.

Developing from the Vedas, the Brahmanas, and the Upanishads, Indian religious philosophy evolved into various schools of thought and also brought forth the theories of the six major nonBuddhist teachers contemporary with Shakyamuni Buddha. But this was the situation in the culture and thought not only of ancient India, for it has turned out that, up to the present day in Indian religion, or in the various religious sects that are freely accepted in various parts of the country, they still preserve the ideas and forms of the traditions of the past. These traditions, with their history of several thousand years, have already fused into a single whole with everyday life. In other words, these things have already become part of the popular consciousness.

Therefore, if we do not arrive at a deep understanding of Indian culture, but instead just get a superficial impression and look at things on the surface, or we only study matters from a single point of view, then we may think that we have already understood the source of Buddhism. But in truth, we will have only a partial, misleading understanding. We will be like a crowd of blind men running their hands over an elephant, each of whom seizes upon one part of its body and thinks that that part typifies the whole elephant.

Moreover, if we do not proceed from the preexisting culture and philosophy of India in our attempt to understand and investigate Buddhism, even if we interpret the Buddhist scriptures as Buddhists, sometimes it is still very easy to mistakenly enter into the religion of the brahmans, or the thought of the other schools of philosophy. This is even more true of the explanations given by non-Buddhists who are estranged from Buddhism. Therefore, before giving an account of Buddhism, we must first deeply plumb the sources of the religious philosophies of Indian culture. At the same time, this will make those who study Buddhism more alert, so they can avoid getting tangled up in the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy.

The second conclusion concerns the rise of Buddhism. From the viewpoint of human life, there is sure to be a sequence of cause and effect that can be traced in the development of human civilization and the evolution of thought, as well as in the appearance of great personalities whose significant achievements in world-transcendence and worldly involvement have led them to found areas of learning and schools of thought. The founders of religions and the great philosophers cannot be exceptions to this rule. First of all, we must understand the religion and philosophy of the preexisting Indian culture, and from this we can discover the motive and goal of Shakyamuni Buddha's compassion and actions on behalf of the world. We can discover where the spirit of the Buddhism he founded lay and how it inherited its legacy from the past and opened the way for the future.

If we can temporarily put aside religious allegiances and let go of our tendencies to reject those who differ from ourselves, from the scholarly viewpoint we can see that there was not such a big difference between Shakyamuni Buddha's role in the ancient history of India and the role of Confucius in China. Confucius was afraid that the Tao of True Kingship was not being manifested, that human minds were getting bogged down, and that misguided doctrines were spreading everywhere. Therefore, he edited the Classic of Poetry and the Classic of History, defined the proper rituals and music, and wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals in order to clarify the principles of managing the world and preserve the tradition of the Tao, thereby perpetuating the spirit of civilization. In rejecting wrong paths, in expounding correct teachings, in concern for equity, in propagating civilizing teachings, in correcting thought and extending wisdom, the concern and spirit for saving the world and its people displayed by Confucius and Shakyamuni Buddha were not very far apart, though there are some slight differences between them. As for the differences in the relative profundity of the doctrines of the philosophies of Shakyamuni Buddha and Confucius, in all fairness, each has its strong points, but we should not force the comparison.

Shakyamuni Buddha was concerned to displace misguided doctrines and keep the true ones, and to cut away excessive complications and adhere to simplicity. But Buddhism itself, in the long run, could not take root and grow in India. As things turned out, the full glory of Buddhism had to wait until China accepted the entire legacy of its teachings and theories as a whole, and synthesized them together to establish a Chinese Buddhism whose glories have shone through ancient and modern times. This is really something inconceivable. But the same is true in the history of many of the world's great religions: in the region that produces the founder of a religion, the people are unwilling to value his contribution. They have to wait until people in other lands start to revere him, and only then can they see how precious he is. Gradually, it all flows back upstream to the source.

People all over the world, ancient and modern, have a common psychological pattern. Generally, they value what is far away and devalue what is close at hand; they revere the ancient and despise the modern; they like what is secret and hate what is manifest; they reject what is familiar and fall in love with what is strange. The common saying has it that: “A monk from far away chants the sutras better.” Perhaps this is the same principle. In the future, will Chinese Buddhism have to wait for some monk from even farther away to come to chant the scriptures? This is enough to make people reflect deeply.